Launch a faceless AI content automation bot that scrapes niche news, builds explainer videos with ElevenLabs, and publishes to YouTube Shorts automatically

You can have a hands-off pipeline that (1) pulls the latest headlines from a niche RSS feed, (2) turns a short summary into a spoken script with OpenAI GPT-4 and ElevenLabs voice synthesis, (3) stitches the audio onto a static visual template with FFmpeg, and (4) uploads the resulting 60-second video to YouTube Shorts - all orchestrated in n8n. After a few hours of setup the bot runs on its own, delivering fresh, faceless content every day.

What you need

Estimated build time: 4-6 hours (including API key creation and testing).

A single n8n workflow on the free tier can publish up to 30 Shorts per day without exceeding YouTube's 10 000-unit daily quota.

Step-by-step build

1. Prepare the infrastructure

1. Create a Google Cloud project and enable the YouTube Data API v3. Generate an OAuth 2.0 client ID (Web application) and download the JSON credentials. The API costs 50 units for a videos.insert call - well within the 10 000-unit daily free quota.
2. Sign up for ElevenLabs (https://elevenlabs.io) and locate your API key in the dashboard. The free tier gives you 20 000 characters of speech per month, enough for ~30 seconds of audio per video.
3. Create an OpenAI API key at https://platform.openai.com/account/api-keys. Use the gpt-3.5-turbo model for best cost-performance.
4. Provision n8n: sign up for the free cloud plan at https://n8n.io, or spin up the Docker image (docker run -d --name n8n -p 5678:5678 n8nio/n8n). Keep the instance running 24/7.

2. Build the n8n workflow skeleton

Open the n8n editor and click New workflow. Name it Faceless News Shorts.

1. Webhook node - receives a scheduled trigger. Set HTTP Method to GET and the Path to /trigger-news.
2. Cron node - schedule the webhook to fire every 6 hours (four times a day). Set Cron Expression to 0 */6 * * *. Connect the Cron node to the Webhook node with a Execute after link.

3. Pull niche news via RSS

Add an HTTP Request node after the Webhook.

• Method: GET
• URL: https://example.com/niche-feed.rss (replace with your niche RSS)
• Response Format: XML

The node returns an XML document. Use a Set node to extract the first <item> using an expression:

{{ $json["rss"]["channel"]["item"][0] }}

Now you have fields title, link, and description.

4. Summarise the article with OpenAI

Insert an OpenAI node (available in n8n's node library).

• Operation: Chat Completion
• Model: gpt-3.5-turbo
• Prompt:

You are a concise news summariser. Produce a 45-word script for a 60-second YouTube Short based on the following article title and description. Include a hook in the first sentence and a call-to-action at the end.

Title: {{ $json["title"] }}
Description: {{ $json["description"] }}

Set Temperature to 0.7. The node returns a summary field containing the script.

5. Generate audio with ElevenLabs

Add an HTTP Request node for ElevenLabs TTS.

• Method: POST
• URL: https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/text-to-speech/{{ $json["voice_id"] }}/stream
• Headers:

{
 "xi-api-key": "YOUR_ELEVENLABS_API_KEY",
 "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

• Body (JSON):

{
 "text": "{{ $node[\"OpenAI\"].json[\"summary\"] }}",
 "voice_settings": {
 "stability": 0.75,
 "similarity_boost": 0.85
 }
}

Check the Response Format is File. The node streams an MP3 file (audio.mp3) to the next step.

6. Stitch audio onto a static visual template

Because n8n has no native video encoder, we call a tiny Docker-based FFmpeg micro-service. Deploy it on the same host (or use a public endpoint like https://ffmpeg-api.example.com).

Add another HTTP Request node:

• Method: POST
• URL: https://ffmpeg-api.example.com/compose
• Headers: Content-Type: multipart/form-data
• Form Data:

The service returns video.mp4 (9:16, 60 seconds).

Tip: If you run FFmpeg locally, the equivalent command is:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i template.png -i audio.mp3 -c:v libx264 -t 60 -pix_fmt yuv420p -vf "scale=1080:1920" -c:a aac video.mp4

7. Upload to YouTube Shorts

Add the YouTube node (n8n marketplace) configured with the OAuth credentials from step 1.

• Operation: Upload Video
• Video File: {{$node["FFmpeg"].json["video.mp4"]}}
• Title: {{ $node["OpenAI"].json["summary"] | slice:0:50 }}...
• Description: Automatically generated short from {{ $node["HTTP Request (RSS)"].json["title"] }}
• Tags: news,shorts,{{ $node["HTTP Request (RSS)"].json["category"] || "niche" }}
• Privacy Status: public

The YouTube API automatically marks videos with a 9:16 aspect ratio and ≤ 60 seconds as Shorts.

8. Add error handling and notifications

Create a IF node that checks the HTTP status of the ElevenLabs request ({{ $node["ElevenLabs"].json["statusCode"] === 200 }}).

• True branch: continue to FFmpeg.
• False branch: send a Slack or email alert via the Email node, attaching the error payload.

Finally, add a Set node at the end to log the successful upload timestamp to a Google Sheet (or Airtable) for future analytics.

9. Activate and test

1. Click Activate in n8n.
2. Manually invoke the webhook (GET https://YOUR_N8N_DOMAIN/webhook/trigger-news) to see the whole chain run once.
3. Verify the video appears in your YouTube Shorts feed within a minute.

If everything works, the cron schedule will fire automatically every six hours, delivering fresh, faceless content without any manual intervention.

faceless ai content automation: common failure points

Warning: Missing any of the OAuth refresh token steps will cause the YouTube upload to fail after the first hour; always store the refresh token securely (e.g., n8n secret).

Where this breaks

Even with the checklist above, real-world deployments hit snags. The most frequent culprits are token expiration (Google refresh tokens can become invalid after 6 months of inactivity) and the brittle nature of RSS parsing - some sites embed HTML entities that break the OpenAI prompt. To mitigate:

1. Automate token refresh: add a Google OAuth2 Refresh Token node that runs daily and updates the stored credential.
2. Sanitise RSS content: before sending to OpenAI, pipe the description through a Function node that strips HTML tags using a regex ({{ $json["description"].replace(/<[^>]*>/g, "") }}).
3. Cost monitoring: create a simple Google Sheet that logs OpenAI token usage ({{ $node["OpenAI"].json["usage"]["total_tokens"] }}) and ElevenLabs character count. Set a conditional alert when you reach 80 % of the free quota.

By building in these safeguards, the bot stays alive for months without manual rescue.

For a deeper technical reference, see n8n's documentation.